1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method, and specifically relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method used for, e.g., diagnosis of a living tissue.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, diagnostic approaches using patterns of blood vessels under a mucous membrane and/or patterns of microstructures in a mucosal surface included in a medical image, such as an image of the inside of a lumen, picked up by inserting an endoscope into a body cavity of a subject have been proposed.
Also, in recent years, as an example of techniques for enabling the aforementioned diagnostic approaches to be aided by, e.g., computers, image processing for extracting and quantifying, e.g., patterns of shapes of blood vessels under a mucous membrane of a living body and/or patterns of microstructures in a mucosal surface of a living body included in a medical image have been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-157902 discloses an image analysis method in which image data of an original image designated by operation of an operating apparatus and the obtained image data of the original image is processed to generate a binarized image, a labeled image, a line-thinned image, a blood vessel shape feature value, a blood vessel feature value, and an image subjected to analysis processing.